Fanny and Fanciness: Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
"You have disappointed every expectation I had formed, and have proved yourself a character the very reverse of what I had supposed. For I HAD, Fanny, as I think my behaviour must have shewn, formed a very favorable opinion of you from the period of my return to England. I had thought you peculiarly free from willfulness of temper, self-conceit, and every tendency to that independence of spirit which prevails so much in modern days, even in young women, and which in young women is offensive and disgusting beyond all common offense. But you have now shewn me that you can and will be willful and perverse, that you can and will decide for yourself, without any consideration or deference for those who have surely some right to guide you--without even asking their advice."
This was the last and only Austen novel I could have the pleasure of reading for the first time this year, and it seems to me I saved the best for last.
Fanny Price is alone among the Austen ladies in being an introvert. While she doesn't have much of the amusing, witty verbal swordplay of Elizabeth Bennett or Emma Woodhouse, Fanny has hidden steel and a depth of character beyond the others. She is brought at age ten from a poor family to be raised by wealthy relatives who never fail to remind her that her station is below theirs and that she ought to be grateful that they deign to notice her (I wondered how familiar JK Rowling is with Mansfield Park, as the most snooty and catty of said relatives is named Mrs. Norris. Coincidence?). As it turns out--and no one could possibly have predicted this--the snooty rich relatives mostly turn out to have not much of value on the inside, while Fanny and her values prove to be proper again and again--despite the diatribe quoted above, which is from an otherwise well-meaning uncle upon her refusal of an arranged marriage, said uncle soon having cause to bitterly regret his words. Very highest recommendations.
Aubrey/Maturin: Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian
"We do have a physician aboard--an amazing hand with a saw or a clyster. He was with me a pint or so ago. Opened our gunner's skull, roused out his brains, set them to rights, stuffed them back in again--I could not bear to look, I assure you gentlemen--bade the armourer take a crown piece, hammer it out thin into a little dome and so clapped it on, screwed it down and sewed up his scalp as neatly as a sailmaker. Now that's what I call real physic--none of your damned pills and delay."
Also this month, I eagerly began a second reading of one of the most delightful "buddy road trip" (at sea) stories I've ever encountered, one that to my knowledge EVERY member of my diverse family, including the ones that don't read, lapped up vigorously as it was published.
Captain Jack Aubrey, the golden-haired exuberant commander whose career is hobbled by his unfortunate tendency to cuckold his superior officers, and Stephen Maturin, the perpetually astonished surgeon with a secret life and unseen depths to him, together make up a legendary friendship during the Napoleonic wars. The first of the 20 1/2 novels is easily the worst, as it falls to it to include explanations of all the frigate-era nautical terms and Naval rankings you have to know as the series progresses, with many passages devoted to the landlubber Stephen having them explained to him in the "You may not know this, Bob, but--" trope. Never mind. It is still exciting.
If you haven't read the Aubrey/Maturin series, I envy you. Because you are going to have a BALL.
Protestants and Protestations: The Monastery, by Walter Scott
In such a situation, his rigour might have relented in favour of the criminal, whom it was his pleasure to crush or to place at freedom. But in Scotland, during this crisis, the case was entirely different. The question was, whether one of the spirituality dared, at the hazard of his own life, step forward to assert and exercise the rights of the church. Was there any one who would venture to wield the thunder in her cause, or must it remain like that in the hand of painted Jupiter, the object of derision instead of terror?
Meh.
See my comments on Maturin's The Albigenses in January. At the time, I called that book a midpoint between Spenser and Scott, with the worst aspects of both. Scott's gothic church-tower book is only twice as interesting. The plot itself, with murders and flights from justice, and a white apparition that appears from time to time to sing riddles and rescue some sort of holy book from unclean hands because something something haggis, ought to be exciting, but since they're all doing what they do over a boring motive about which is the One true religion, I could barely keep my eyes open. YMMV.
Exploring the American Holocaust: Kindred, by Octavia Butler
The slave's body jerked and strained against its ropes. I watched the whip for a moment wondering if it was like the one Weylin had used on Rufus years before. If it was, I understood completely why Margaret Weylin had taken the boy and fled. The whip was heavy and at least six feet long, and i wouldn't have used it on anything living. It drew blood and screams at every blow.
I am grateful for "time travel" books to engage my appetite for speculative fiction while trying to read about past times. Last year it was the Outlander series; this year I found a jewel of a tale by the late, great Octavia Butler, in which the WOC partner in a 1970s mixed-race marriage (which has its own difficulties at the time) is several times yanked back to the pre-war South (you know, the days when today's Republicans say America was "great") at times when her white ancestor the shitty plantation heir and her black ancestor the slave (what some of today's Republicans call "foreign workers" or "immigrants") are in mortal peril. Either she needs to save them in order to eventually be born, or something something garbanzo.
Like Hambly's book Fever Season, reviewed last month, Kindred makes the argument that the American South had a holocaust similar to Hitler's, with the distinction that it lasted over 200 years. So much degradation, non-personing, casual violence accepted as the natural way of things. And our country has failed to read and study this ugly history, and has especially failed to vow "Never Again.". The Federal government is continuing to gloss it all over as I type this, and there are justifiable fears that at least some in the President's cabinet are trying to push the envelope as far back to these conditions as they can possibly get away with.. Very high recommendations.
The pre-Victorian Murders: A Sudden Fearful Death, by Anne Perry. The Jannisary Tree, by Jason Goodwin. Mrs. Jeffries Takes Tea at Three, by Emily Brightwell
Her idealism had been betrayed, the only thing that had made her precious, given her dignity and belief, had been destroyed. He had mocked the very best in her. She was an ugly woman, coarse and unloved, and she knew it. She had had one value, and now it was gone. Perhaps to have robbed her of it was a sin like murder too.
--from A Sudden Fearful Death
Yashim had many things--innate charm, a gift for languages, and the ability to open those gray eyes suddenly wide. Both men and women had found themselves strangely hypnotized by his voice, before they had even noticed who was speaking. But he lacked balls.
Not in the vulgar sense. Yashim was reasonably brave. But he was that creature rare even in nineteenth-century Istanbul. Yashim was a eunnuch.
--from The Janissary Tree
I am going to do what I don't normally do here and SPOILER the plot of A Sudden Fearful Death, because it isn't worth reading, especially given the very high quality of the first three books in Perry's Monk series. The big reveal is that the murderer, a very respected and capable doctor with a wife and family, on trial and represented by the "good guy" lawyer Rathbone, did not have the improbable motive of sex-blackmail as accused by the crown, but was really being blackmailed because he performed abortions on impregnated rape victims who would otherwise have risked death or disfigurement in the back-alley proceedings of the day, which are also described in CW detail. And rather than have subtext about how crazy it is that a procedure that in the reader's time is completely legal and aboveboard should be grounds for blackmail in backward begone times (and Perry is not shy of commenting on the more loathsome sexist and classist aspects of 19th Century England), all three regular sleuthing characters are shocked and appalled as if, not the murder, but the abortions, are the most slimy criminal act ever done. Considering that one of the previous books involved incestuous child-abuse, this is offensive to me. Also offensive is the worst use I've ever seen of the tired old trope in which a defendant says to the lawyer, "Yes, I'm guilty--Ha-Ha-Ha-and you can't do a thing about it! You are obligated by law to defend me!", and then the lawyer for the defense finds a way to get the guy convicted on purpose--in this case delaying the end of the trial for days until Monk finds a witness that the defense brings in to convict him at the last minute. This is considered a good thing. Not by me. If the life-saving doctor is to orphan his seven children and the hospital lose its most able practitioner, then that lawyer should be disbarred and imprisoned himself for the grossest breach of duty.
The Mrs. Jeffries novels (inspector's housekeeper and the rest of the staff solve the police inspector's crimes for him, trying real hard to make sure he doesn't even suspect their help as he gets all the credit) continue to be trash, but they're tasty trash, and I read another three-tale omnibus this month. It's maybe what I can best handle these days, as Sweet Potato Saddam's administration continues to eat away at my mental health.
The last historical mystery I read this month is the start of a new series that does NOT take place in England or America. Yashim the Eunnuch works for the sultan of the Ottoman Empire ten years after the "Auspicious Incident" (a massacre of the Jannisaries, a military group that had devolved over the centuries from the Turks' elite shock troops into a decadent caste of bullies who asserted a military veto-or-else-we-kill-you power over the government before the Sultan finally ambushed, slaughtered and disbanded them. I had had no idea that this event happened, and had to go look it up) and at a time when remnants of the Jannisaries appear to be hatching vengeful plots behind the scenes, with the soldiers of the new, more modern army turning up killed in creative ways. The plot becomes appropriately Byzantine. I will read more by Goodwin.
Theater Majors: Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, by JW von Goethe
“Should not we too go as strictly and as ingeniously to work, seeing we practise an art far more delicate than that of music; seeing we are called on to express the commonest and the strangest emotions of human nature, with elegance, and so as to delight? Can anything be more shocking than to slur over our rehearsal, and in our acting to depend on good luck, or the capricious chance of the moment? We ought to place our highest happiness and satisfaction in mutually desiring to gain each other’s approbation; we should even value the applauses of the public only in so far as we have previously sanctioned them among ourselves. Why is the master of the band more secure about his music than the manager about his play? Because, in the orchestra, each individual would feel ashamed of his mistakes, which offend the outward ear; but how seldom have I found an actor disposed to acknowledge or feel ashamed of mistakes, pardonable or the contrary, by which the inward ear is so outrageously offended!"
I could barely keep my eyes open. I am getting SO sick of old German writing, both the philosophy and the novels make my head swim.
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship is apparently responsible for the word "Bildungsroman" (story in which the young protagonist grows up during a journey of discovery) #TheGermansHaveAWordForEverything. You'd think I would be intrigued by a story of a young man going off to find himself among a traveling theater company full of geeks and misfits with something to teach him, and that later gets all spooky and metaphysical, with a secret society showing him that his life is already written down in a book. But the style is so thick and serious as to be off-putting. It is also offensively long, at 600 pages between the eight sections. If you've read it and liked it--and Goethe is still read today, often by young folks who find Meister's story inspirational--then please tell me what I've missed. I am more than capable of having my hair parted by the clue plane as it whooshes right over my head. Maybe this is one of those times.
Poldark Next Gen: The Stranger from the Sea; The Miller's Dance, by Winston Graham
Dear life--it seems a long time since--are we the same people, you and I, Ross? All that experience since, of striving and living and loving...all the stress and the strain and the joy and the pleasure. So many people dead...so much has happened. Two of our children grown up and having love affairs of their own. Dwight and Caroline married. Geoffrey Charles, then a tiny infant, now a gallant captain, so much, so much. Can we two be the same? Would you know yourself if you saw yourself coming across the beach as you were then? Would I? I doubt it. If I am not cleverer, I must be wiser. But do you not love me still? Did you not lst night? Are we not somehow, somehow the same?
The eighth and ninth of the Poldark books take up a decade after the seventh leaves off (so far, each book has covered about two consecutive years, and this is a big leap), and some of the characters who we watched get born earlier in the series now take center stage with their young romances, educations, ambitions and mischiefs. The "stranger from the sea" is a new character, Stephen Carrington, who brings good and bad changes to the area, while the miller's dance is performed at a local fair at which several new plot twists ensue.
The characters continue to be well-drawn and cared for, and the historical background--including now the regency, Luddite riots, the Iberian war, the assassination of Percival, the 1812 conflict with America, and news of Napoleon's defeat in Russia--as well as steam engine developments, economic depression in war time, the perils of coach travel, and privateering--enriches the plot and one's understanding of the times. As always with this series, highest recommendations.
More Unreliable Narrators: The Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo
But spectacled man invents implements outside his body, and if there was any health or nobbility in the inventor there is none in the user. Implements are bought or sold or stolen, and man goes on getting weaker and more cunning. It is natural that his cunning should increase in proportion to his weakness. The earliest implements only added to the length of his arm, and could not be employed except by the exercise of his own strength. But a machine bears no relation to the body. The machine creates disease because it denies what has been the law of creation throughout the ages. The law of the strongest disappeared and we have abandoned natural selection. We need something more than psychoanalysis to help us.
Meh. This novel is told from the point of view of a man undergoing psychoanalysis, whose therapist has asked him to write his autobiography as part of the treatment (said therapist apparently having published the private manuscript without permission as revenge for the patient having discontinued therapy sessions, in violation of all psychotherapy privilege yadda yadda, see my rage at Perry's A Sudden Fearful Death, above.
The "autobiography" dutifully records the narrator's life milestones: the death of his father; courtship, marriage and adultery; failed and successful business ventures; and several times he had his "last cigarette" before attempting to quit smoking. Until we get to the end, he doesn't seem particularly more mentally ill than anyone else; however, because he is identified as "insane" and his writings therefore to be distrusted, it's hard to see what parts of the narrative should be trusted and which should not. If there are clues as to what 'really" happened that differ from Zeno's account, they went right over my head.
Slavery Is Freedom: Philosophy of Right, by Georg WTF Hegel
The idea which people most commonly have of freedom is that it is arbitrariness--the mean, chosen by abstract reflection, between the will wholly determined by natural impulses, and the will free absolutely. If we hear it said that the definition of freedom is the ability to do what we please, such an idea can only be taken to reveal an utter immaturity of thought, for it contains not even an inkling of the absolutely free will, of right ethical life, and so forth.
This Hegel book actually is in the Great Books series, and while dense, is short enough to be more understandable than the Logic and the Phenomenology of Spirit. It's also just readable enough to see the flim flam, starting with the smug assertion that by freedom we of course, OF COURSE do not mean license, oh no no no, that would be silly and immature. No, by freedom. we ultimately mean OBEDIENCE to the State! That is--Hegel passes from freedom to "enlightened" freedom (the wisdom to bind oneself to reasonable social limits) to the need for contracts to be enforceable so that we may trust enough to enter contracts, to the need for government to enforce said contracts, to the need of all to bow to government without reserve. Truly, slavery is freedom!
In fact, Hegel can laugh at my "utter immaturity of thought", but I will agree with Hobbes that freedom means not NEEDING any stinking licence, and that it DOES mean the extreme end of being able to do whatever you want. I say further that ethics or "philosophy of right" is the study of what internal or external restraints should be put on our absolute freedom in the best possible society and government.(It may be semantic differences in getting to similar places: "no restraint is not desirable, therefore that is not what we call freedom" versus "freedom means no restraint, and therefore pure freedom is not desirable", but words matter in philosophy). Better to be like Hobbes and openly say that you are urging people to give up some or all freedom out of the self-interest of living in an ordered society that protects you than to pretend that subjection of the will to a master is freedom itself. A government that confuses people as to what freedom is is less trustworthy and causes more harm.
Hegel ultimately doesn't go quite as far as Hobbes in that he postulates written laws, not a king, as "sovereign", and represents these laws as being the collective will of the people--which is maybe better than one king claiming to be the voice and sword of an entire population--but as any victim of the teahad Congress may have noticed, just because some asshole gets on the throne doesn't mean he represents the people.
CILL Mah Landlord: The principles of Political Economy and Taxation, by David Ricardo
Taxes on wages will raise wages, and therefore will diminish the rate of the profits of stock. We have already seen that a tax on necessaries will raise their prices, and will be followed by a rise of wages. The only difference between a tax on necessaries and a tax on wages is that the former will necessarily be accompanied by a rise in the price of necessaries, but the latter will not; towards a tax on wages, consequently, neither the stockholder, the landlord, nor any other class but the employers of labour will contribute.
Ricardo reads like a modern economics text (thereby raising the question whether their style or theories have changed much in 200 years): wordy, dusty, and filled with assertions that pushing on market forces in one direction will produce an equal and opposite result in a different direction. Hence the beginning of the age-old assertion made by the paid lickspittles of the wealthy, that any attempt to rein in the excesses of the wealthy will simply "cause" the wealthy to do some underhanded trick to fuck over the people supposed to be helped, and so government is urged to give up and not even try.
To me, the most interesting aspect of Ricardo's (thankfully short) treatise is the picture it paints of a world in which the landlord, manufacturing, and proletariat interests are having a three way struggle, such that the manufacturers--the main employers of labour--are aligned with the workers against landowners to keep the price of food from rising, because a rise in the price of necessaries will cause wages to go up, since it will cost more to pay a laborer enough to feed himself and his family. Today's employer class, of course, has solved that problem by blatantly paying only starvation wages and scolding the hungry workers for 'being too lazy to earn enough to feed themselves."
Harvard Classics: the Goethe Volume
Old friend! Ever faithful sleep, dost thou too forsake me, like my other friends? How wert thou wont of yore to descend unsought upon my free brow, cooling my temples as with a myrtle wreath of love! Amidst the din of battle, on the waves of life, I rested in the thine arms, breathing lightly as a growing boy. When tempests whistled through the leaves and boughs, when the summits of the lofty trees swung creaking in the blast, the inmost core of my heart remained unmoved. What agitates thee now? What shakes thy firm and steadfast mind? I feel it, ’tis the sound of the murderous axe, gnawing at thy root. Yet I stand erect, but an inward shudder runs through my frame. Yes, it prevails, this treacherous power; it undermines the firm, the lofty stem, and ere the bark withers, thy verdant crown falls crashing to the earth.
The Harvard Classics (Doctor Elliott's Five Foot Shelf of Weird Choices) decided to represent Goethe with a volume that is mostly Faust Part 1 (see this January's post), with Marlowe's much lesser work Doctor Faustus for, I presume, comparison purposes; Egmont, a pretty forgettable play about a regent who was martyred by the Duke of Alva as part of the 17th century Dutch war with Spain; and an even more forgettable poem, Hermann and Dorothea, about star crossed lovers who make it. He's the son of a wealthy Huguenot refugee from France; she is a lovely peasant girl on the German side of the river; both sets of parents disapprove of their love, but eventually get reconciled. Each section of the poem is named after one of the nine Muses, but not in a way that appeared to me to fit a theme appropriate to each section. Meh.
Find all of my previous Bookposts here: http://admnaismith.livejournal.com/tag/bookposts